SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

John Adams: Son of Chamber Symphony (2007)

Stravinsky: Concerto for Piano and Winds (1923-1924)

Louis Andriessen: De Staat (1976)

 

If frequency of performance is a criterion, John Adams’s 1992 Chamber Symphony is one of the most popular late 20th-century scores. In 2007 Adams gave birth to Son of Chamber Symphony, and like its dad, it is a restless moto perpetuo—the aural equivalent of Paul Klee’s iconic painting, Twittering Machine. Here Adams himself conducted the Ensemble ACJW at Zankel Hall, in an exuberant reading that left no doubt about the work’s homage to cartoons and honking traffic.

 

Pianist Jeremy Denk was the alert soloist in Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds. After a slow introduction, the first movement bursts into life before rising to a throaty conclusion. The second movement has the gravitas of an anthem—or maybe a dirge—and several piano solos which Denk dispatched with charm and tenderness. In the finale, agitated rhythms pile up like a maniacal ragtime display, before finally petering out with some material from the slow movement. Most pianists stay tightly focused on the keyboard, but Denk, a highly communicative performer (with an engaging blog called Think Denk), seemed in close contact with the audience. Occasionally he would turn and lean out to the crowd, as if intending to speak about the piece while it was happening—a genial touch that somehow seemed very Stravinskian.

 

But neither of these works could have prepared those in the hall for the stunning performance of De Staat, a 1976 landmark by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. (As a side note, I suspect one of the reasons this concert was programmed at 6:00 P.M. was to avoid potential loud sounds spilling over into Carnegie’s main hall.) The score requires a large brass contingent, plus two electric guitars and one electric bass, two harps, two pianos, four violas, and four female voices. Andriessen uses texts from Plato’s Republic, passages which argue in favor of certain musical modes, and which warn, “Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state.” But here Andriessen seeks to disagree with Plato’s assessment, trumpeting his displeasure in a deliberately aggressive way.

 

With most of the musicians standing, the ACJW crew unleashed a caterwauling tide of sound. Oboes and horns mixed in squawking splendor. Rapid unisons introduced huge brass chords. The words are all but unintelligible, but this seems more by design than by accident, and in the final section, trombones, trumpets and horns combined, braying away. The net result sounds like a cross between a jazz band and a revving car engine, with The Rite of Spring thrown in—savvy programming on Adams’s part, harking back to both of the previous works. During the loud ovation, I was wishing they would play it again.

 

Bruce Hodges